Health & Medicine - Posted by Megan Orciari-Yale on Thursday, September 13, 2012 16:54 - 5 Comments 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Anti-obesity messages: stigma or support?
"By stigmatizing obesity or individuals struggling with their weight, campaigns can alienate the audience they intend to motivate and hinder the behaviors they intend to encourage," says lead author Rebecca Puhl, director of researcher at Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Above, First Lady Michelle Obama hosts an event in London as part of the Let's Move campaign, which received positive response from the public. (Credit: Tim Hipps, IMCOM Public Affairs/US Army/Flickr)
YALE (US) — A new study examines which public health campaigns motivate people to lose weight, and which come across as stigmatizing.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
With more than two thirds of Americans now overweight or obese, public health campaigns have emerged across the country to promote behavior that can help reduce America’s waistline.
But do the messages communicated by these campaigns help reduce obesity or potentially make the problem worse?
According to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, the public responds more favorably to obesity-related health campaigns that emphasize specific health behaviors and personal empowerment for health, rather than messages that imply personal blame and stigmatize those who are obese.
Researchers conducted an online experimental study with a national sample of 1041 Americans. Participants viewed campaign messages from national and highly publicized public health campaigns to address obesity. Their findings are published in the International Journal of Obesity.
They were asked to rate characteristics of each campaign as positive or negative and state whether they felt motivated to improve their health or stigmatized by the campaign’s message.
Campaigns rated most favorable and motivating were messages that promoted specific health behaviors:
- Increased fruit and vegetable consumption, as promoted by the national “5-A-Day” campaign
- “Learn the facts, eat healthy, get active, take action,” as encouraged by the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign and other more general health messages
- Campaigns that attempted to instill confidence and personal empowerment regarding one’s health.
Interestingly, note the researchers, campaign messages rated most positive and motivating made no mention of obesity at all.
By contrast, anti-obesity campaigns that already have been publicly criticized for promoting shame, blame, and stigmatization toward individuals struggling with obesity were rated most negatively by the study participants, who rated them as the least motivating for behavior change.
Participants expressed less of an intention to act upon the messages’ content.
Among those campaigns rated, the worst was the Children’s Health Care of Atlanta Campaign to address childhood obesity, which featured billboards portraying obese youth with captions such as “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid,” and “Chubby kids may not outlive their parents.”
The authors assert that messages intended to motivate individuals to lose weight may be more effective if framed in ways that promote specific health behaviors and confidence to engage in those behaviors, rather than messages that imply personal blame.
“By stigmatizing obesity or individuals struggling with their weight, campaigns can alienate the audience they intend to motivate and hinder the behaviors they intend to encourage,” says lead author Rebecca Puhl, the Rudd Center’s director of research.
“Public health campaigns that are designed to address obesity should carefully consider the kinds of messages that are disseminated, so that those who are struggling with obesity can be supported in their efforts to become healthier, rather than shamed and stigmatized.”
Please wait
5 Comments
Darliene Howell
You cannot determine a person’s health by simply looking at their size, shape or weight.
“You can’t tell just by looking at someone if they are fit,” says Steven Blair, a professor in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. “You can certainly be fat, even obese, and still be fit.”
Stereotyping all fat people as lazy, gluttons, fraught with disease that they have brought on themselves is discriminatory and stigmatizing. You cannot tell by a person’s body size what their fitness levels are, how hard they work, how intelligent they are, or how disciplined they are. To do so, is overly simplistic.
Stigma and discrimination of people based on their physical appearance or body size is resulting in physiological reactions to this stress. The pressure to reduce their body size in not only extremely difficult, if not impossible, it is BAD FOR THEIR HEALTH. And to put this type of stress on children is unconscionable.
Although I respect the First Lady’s good intentions, good intentions can scar people mentally, emotionally and physically for life. Shifting our focus to behaviors that bring us health is laudable, I struggle with that resulting in changing the way that society sees us. If I do not exercise 30-minutes daily, am I any less deserving of my civil rights? If I eat a larger portion than might be considered “enough”, am I deserving of shame as a result?
Before making a judgment about a person based solely on the size of their body, ask yourself: if you were to gain weight, would you want to be treated the way you are treating fat people right now? And which of your civil rights should be taken away from you because you are fat?
Join the fight for Equality At Every Size. http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/
Pat
“You cannot tell by a person’s body size what their fitness levels are, how hard they work, how intelligent they are, or how disciplined they are.”
“If I do not exercise 30-minutes daily..”.
“If I eat a larger portion than might be considered “enough”, am I deserving of shame as a result?”
Well, I think you just revealed your fitness level, how hard you work to keep it, and your level of discipline. It wasn’t too intelligent to confirm the exact stereotypes you were complaining about.
Smokers can be completely healthy but there is a stigma attached to them. Same with gamblers, drinkers, and drug abusers. Many can function fine in society but still have a stigma attached to their behaviors. Along with obesity, these are self-inflicted conditions resulting from a lack of self-control.
People who are in control will judge those who are not, that’s just human nature. But hey, be glad the Christian Right hasn’t figured out that gluttony is a mortal sin because if their treatment of homosexuals is anything to go by….
The morbid obese do not pay much attention to themselves, their body or public opinion. What the hell is stigma, but an abrasive, sometimes unfair opinion from others regarding any issue in question.
Stigma or not, those people eating like there is no tomorrow, are just like junkies, both have an excuse from
the outside, the society, popression and else….but never talk, the lack of will r, purpose.
Pedro
People are not obese because they are lazy. People are obese because they eat a lot of sugar, starches and refined flour. It’s not even their fault because 99% of people don’t realize why they are obese. In fact people aren’t obese because they are lazy.. they are lazy because they are obese!
Solution – cut the carbs… no more sugar, refined flour, starches, etc.
Interesting article. Many of these campaigns can be effective if done properly. Education is important to help children. Some campaigns do educate in a positive way.